


colors she left in your black and white field

by Wallyallens



Series: small steps home [3]
Category: Batgirl (Comics), Batman (Comics), DCU
Genre: F/M, Gen, other characters mentions, references to past character death, team dead robins
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-28
Updated: 2015-04-28
Packaged: 2018-03-26 06:17:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,275
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3840211
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wallyallens/pseuds/Wallyallens
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>On the anniversary of his death, Jason Todd visits his grave. He's not the only one.</p>
            </blockquote>





	colors she left in your black and white field

**Author's Note:**

> 'Sowing Season' by Brand New. Go listen to it.

_Is it in you now,_  
_To watch the things you gave your life to broken?_  
_And stoop and build them up with warn out tools._

__*_ _

The letters were in stone and felt final. When Jason put his hand against the headstone and dragged his fingers over them, knuckles dirty and bruised with blood underneath his nails, it was cold. Dead.

His name.

His _grave_.

“Fuck.”

With his other hand, he pulled the cigarette from his lips and sighed, sending up a trail of smoke. Usually, he could feel it, the heat in his mouth and smoke against his skin – but not today. Any other time, it would be enough to put him at ease but right then he was just going through the motions, coasting without control.

The distance he felt was good; the coldness seeping from the grey stone and infecting the air around it.

Jason was cold, too. He knew what he was looking at, and knew it should mean something, but everything was numb. Blood pumped through him loudly, deafening him to the world, reminding him he was alive – but he couldn’t feel a goddamned thing.

Maybe he could blame it on the weather, the sky above grim and howling. Gotham in April balanced on a coin’s edge: one day would be warm as the Bahamas; the next like a new ice age had arrived to wipe them out. That day there was a storm on the horizon, the wind whipping his hair ineffectively and spits of rain occasionally landing on his face, not quite strongly enough to warrant moving. At a stretch, he could claim the storm was causing the sinking of his spirits – nobody liked the rain.

So Jason stood, trying to keep his peace. It kept raining on his face lightly, until his green shirt was soaked through to the skin and his hair flopped against his forehead, damp and sombre. All the while he was smoking and staring at his grave like they were in a damn staring contest. He laughed in his head at that. It was better than having to remember, or facing the day.

April 27th.

The day he died. Not that it stuck.

“It’s weird, right?”

The voice came from behind him and Jason flinched, instinctively going for his gun and turning to find a tiny blonde standing a few feet away, seemingly unconcerned by the loaded gun levelled at her chest. Inwardly, he cursed himself for being so distracted he didn’t hear her approach – then outwardly when he realized who it was.

“Shit. What do you want, _Batgirl_?” He spat the last word like a curse. There may be a ceasefire between him and his brothers, and even he couldn’t deny that things were getting better – not that he knew how to feel about that – but he didn’t want to see any of them today. The symbol, the family: on the day he died for it, he didn’t want to see a single sign of the Bat.

He could take the peace; there was even a part of Jason healed enough to admit he liked it when Dick showed up randomly at his table eating breakfast and the occasional case they took together – and even the Brat wasn’t too bad these days. It was . . . different. Better than being alone.

It made his guts untwist, knowing he at least had someone to call if he was bleeding half to death. True, that had only happened once and Dick really was an awful nurse – too smothering – but Jason had to admit it was nice to be breathing; that someone cared.

Jason’s scattered thoughts focused again on the girl in front of him as she spoke.

“Am I wearing a uniform?” The girl replied with a sigh, hands shifting to her hips. True enough, she was in her civvies and shivering from the cold. Glaring at him disapprovingly, she ignored the gun and carried on walking towards him, brushing past him to look down at the grave. “It’s Steph, alright? And I’m not looking for a fight, so put down the gun, moron.”

“What are you doing here? Did _he_ send you?” Jason asked through gritted teeth.

“Nobody sent me! There’s a reason I came here without a mask, you idiot – I’m not here as Batgirl, or for them. I’m here for _me_. And you, I guess.”

“Fine, BG.” Jason said, just to piss her off. Begrudgingly, he did return his gun to it’s holster, grumbling under his breath as he did. “Why are _you_ here?”

“Because I got one of these, too,” Steph replied, glancing at him out of the corner of her eyes. Her hand lazily gestured towards the grave. Jason’s eyes turned towards it and fixed there, but he seemed to be listening, so she pushed her luck a little more and kept talking, trying to keep her tone casual. “Somewhere out there, there’s a grave with my name on it.”

“We should start a club,” he snarked back.

“Why not? We have a lot in common.”

Steph spoke with such an earnestly, just in her voice alone carrying an honest weight that shook the air around it that Jason kinda hated her. It wasn’t possible for her to mean that. Why would she? Jason had never made time for her other than to hurt the people she cared about – so why did the blonde with a sunshine smile give a damn?

But she was smiling over at him and he couldn’t just ignore that.

“Yeah,” he eventually huffed, trying not to sound bitter. It didn’t work. “Like what?”

“Your accent. We sound the same because we grew up in the same way . . . Bruce, the others –" she gave a little shrug, "They never got it. They grew up either away from here or in their part of Gotham, where it’s all shining light and fancy dinners and the most important thing is finding the perfect outfit for the summer’s social scene,” Steph said the last part in a put on accent, which mostly involved her pitching up her own voice and sounding nothing like anyone human. Ending it, she laughed just as bitterly as he could sometimes, and Jason believed that she understood it like he did. “Their Gotham isn’t the same as ours. The streets, the way we grew up – we learnt to be tough young, and that’s not something you lose.”

“Bruce tried to train it out of me,” Jason admitted. “When I was Robin, I mean. He never had to teach me how to end a fight – I knew that already, but he was always drilling these stupid techniques into me. ‘Control, not impulse’, ‘Fight with your mind’ and all that bullshit. It never took.”

“Me neither. He claimed I was fired as Robin because I wasn’t trained or ready – _but that was a load of crap, he used me to make a point_ ,” Steph added resentfully under her breath, “But even now I still fight the same way. Swing with my gut.”

“You can’t train it away.”

“Not that he didn’t try,” she mused with a small shake of her head. They were looking at each other instead of the grave now, small smiles gracing their faces, and Jason could pretend it wasn’t there while he was unfocused; this was easy. Talking to Steph was easy and he regretted not doing it sooner. “What he does as Batman – he never saw the line like we did. The way the world changed down there while he was busy becoming a living legend . . . he never saw the edge. What he made people – he made them _desperate_. And that made them dangerous.” She spoke quietly now, softly, “I guess me and you learned that the hard way, huh?”

Jason nodded, saying nothing for a few minutes and letting his mind wander off. It would be easy to be angry at Bruce. So damned easy – but he was getting better. And he wasn’t going to admit defeat now by getting pissed off at his ex-father figure for not being able to change the past.

Steph wasn’t angry. He could see that: the set of her jaw was determined, not enraged, and the way she spoke the words . . . it was understanding, not ranting. She knew there was no changing the world to the way it used to be before people dressed as Bats made people dress as clowns, and she accepted that. But she didn’t forget.

He cracked a smile, wondering if she remembered anything else. There was a saying in the Bowery; a mantra. “The first two rules of street fighting:” Jason said slowly, savouring the shape of the words in his mouth and memories of being thirteen years old and repeating them to himself as Robin. “Give as good as you get-”

"And get back up again,” Steph finished the phrase without hesitation, brow creasing in nostalgia. “My dad used to say that to me, and I always heard it around. It stays with you, doesn’t it?”

“Yeah,” Jason agreed.

“Yeah.”

At her little sigh, he looked over in worry. Quick to assume he had said something wrong and upset her talking about the past, she opened her mouth to speak again. “You see, we’re not so different. Two black sheep – a herd.”

Shaking his head, Jason tried to hide his laugh. It grew tinged with sadness as he realized she was wrong about that; he really was alone. “ _You_ still wear the symbol, BG. You still have a place with them.”

Steph grunted. “Yeah, right. Bruce fired me as Robin, and only took me on to use me in the first place,” she listed the crimes on her fingers. “Tim practically ordered me to stop being Spoiler. Dick never approved of me being Batgirl – he tried so hard to shut me down at first. I have a place, but I’ve fought for it. It’s not _mine_ – Spoiler was that. The only thing, maybe.”

“I get that,” Jason nodded. “I chose ‘Red Hood’ for a lot of reasons – one of which was that it was something Bruce would never touch. It was what I made myself; not what he made me.”

“I get it,” she said. “All of it. Why you do . . . what you do. I understand – I mean, I’m not condoning killing people, don’t get me wrong, but I know _why_ you think it’s necessary. So do the others: they’re just too afraid to admit it.” As if she hadn’t just lifted a weight from his shoulders, that someone understood; that there was someone else who got it – Steph’s eyes returned to the grave with a flick of her hair. “But you should stop. It’s time to let it go.”

“It’s not a game,” he said sharply, her words ringing in his ears. At the assumption that it was so easy to change, he felt anger sap back into his bones. “I save lives, BG. It doesn’t matter how I do it.”

“It does.”

“Cry me a river,” Jason snapped, “I thought you got it.”

Steph huffed and shook her head, edge of irritation creeping into her voice. “Damn stubborn Batboys! – And you say you’re not a part of the family.”

“You can leave if you don’t want to be here,” he retorted bitterly.

“I don’t want to go, Jason. I just . . . I just wish you’d listen, sometimes.” Pulling a hand through her hair, now stringy and wet, Steph tried not to roll her eyes. It had been going so well. They were talking; laughing even – but Jason still lashed out at the thought of changing. It wasn’t like she was asking him to pack a bag and move back to the Manor – she was just suggesting there was another way. Damn Batboys. She looked back to the grave, although a resentful air lay between them now. “I still can’t believe I have a grave. That freaks me out a lot . . . I’m a coward. I’ve never been to see mine.”

Without pausing, Jason snapped back at her. “It’s not a god damn tourist attraction, it’s a grave.”

“I-I never meant it like that,” she replied quickly. Although his eyes were on the stone, Jason had reacted angrily, tone terse out of nowhere. And once again – she was back to skating on thin ice. Her words had destroyed the illusion of normalcy between them. “I just mean . . . I just feel like I should see it, you know? It’s my grave. That’s . . . that’s huge. I don’t even know what it looks like.”

He sighed, running his hand through his hair and ignoring the way they lingered on the streak of white. “Does this have a point?”

“The point is that I get it, okay? I know why you’re standing here.”

“The _fuck_ do you know?” Jason said, voice rising, and suddenly the world snapped into focus. The white tinge to the scene lifted; his body thawed with the enraged coursing of his blood as he stepped back, fists balling at his sides. Face twisting into a vicious smile, he jabbed a finger in her direction. “You never died like I did! You got the easy option – running away to Africa, from what I heard. I _died_. Why does nobody fucking get that?”

“Hey!” Steph interrupted every bit as mad as he was. Instead of shying away from his rage or acting cold like Bruce would, she stepped closer and shouted back. “Don’t you _dare_ call that easy, got it? I was beaten half to death by Black Mask! And I didn’t get a Lazarus Pit. It was hard, and it was painful - but I got back up.”

“You think I wouldn’t swap places with you if I could? I fucking died and I -” he turned to the grave instead, stubbing his cigarette out right above the ‘T’ and leaving a scar of black ash. “I’m here because I fucking crawled out of _that_!”

She was silenced for a moment. “Jason, I-”

“And look at it, BG,” he ranted on. “Filled in like nothing happened, but it did. It _did_.”

All of the anger in Jason’s body faded away, sapped and chipped at until there was nothing left. His fists uncurled; his arms fell limp at his sides; the tension left his back as he slumped visibly. A second later, he sighed deeply. Then he sat by the grave, legs a heartbeat away from giving in anyway.

He said, in a low, dull voice. “I’m sorry.”

Steph stood a few steps away cautiously. The outburst seemed to be over, all of his anger fizzled away somewhere along the lines, replaced by damp eyes. The legendary rage of the Red Hood, huh? She had been told to fear that; to fear him – but looking at him sitting there defeated, she wasn’t afraid.

Slowly, she walked over and sat beside him without a word. His hands were in his lap, legs carelessly crossed at the ankles in front of him. As she watched, his hands shook until he pulled another cigarette from his packet. Wordlessly, they sat for a few minutes as he turned it around in his hands, steadying his breathing.

“Story of my fucking life, right?” Jason eventually said, but his voice wasn’t angry or dead like it was before – his words were quiet, remorseful. “Everything I do gets paved over, like I wasn’t there at all. I get replaced as Robin like it didn’t even matter: first by Drake, then by _you_ – now there’s another kid wearing the colours – Bruce’s blood son, no less. How could he do that? After I died fighting for his cause – how could he put someone else in that place? Risk someone else?”

“I don’t know,” Steph answered, shaking her head. “I don’t understand a lot of things Bruce does – but Jason, you know he cared, right? About you and that . . . he cared that you died.”

“Well he’s got an odd way of showing it.”

“It’s _Bruce_. ‘Emotionally stunted’ doesn’t even begin to cover it.” Jason chuckled at that, allowing his lips to crease upwards before he ducked his head to hide it. The air between them mellowed again, back to the way it was before. Taking it as a good sign that he at least wasn’t going to shoot her today, Steph added, “And when I was Robin, at least, he used to talk about you.”

“As a bad example, I’ll bet.”

“No - as a hero. I can’t tell you how many times I got compared to your or Tim. Jesus, it was annoying,” she laughed. “But yes, you were the horror story Bruce told, too. ‘If you go out unprepared, you’ll end up dead’ – he used to pull that one all the time when he banned me from patrolling. He took precautions, he just-”

“Kept putting children in the line of fire.”

“Don’t you get it? Robin isn’t any one of us. It’s a legacy – that carries weight, even if you don’t realize it.”

“Great,” Jason replied sarcastically, “Now we can all hold hands around a campfire and sing ‘Kumbaya’.”

“He never told me you were such a dork,” she shot back cheerily, “That’s news to me.”

“I was aiming for sarcastic.”

“You missed it thirty miles back, then.”

“Cute.”

“We’re just tragic, aren’t we?” Steph looked over to him and grinned. She looked like the sun, and Jason wondered how the hell she turned out so hopeful while he was so dark. An hour ago, he would have called that unfair. Now . . . he knew it was force of will that made her that way, not luck. “Do you like Burritos?”

Jason’s head snapped up, “W-what?”

“Bu-ri-tos,” Steph spelled the word out, laughing. “Mexican food. Rice. Meat. Big wrap. You like ‘em?”

“I guess,” he shrugged. “Point?”

“I know a _great_ burrito place, and this is no place for you to be. Come on,” Steph got to her feet as if that decided it. She kept her back pointedly to the grave, blocking it with her body as she stood in front of Jason and held out a hand. “Come on, Jason. It’s not open all night.”

Taking a second to breathe, Jason reached up and caught her hand. Fingers gripped his own as she took a hold and pulled him up, surprisingly strong for someone her sized; as their hands touched, he felt the bumps on her skin from white scars, as beaten up as his own were from years of the fight.

On his feet, he let go. Not giving him a second to look back, Steph looped her arm around his shoulders and started marching them away from there, dragging him down to her height so Jason’s steps were uneven and unbalanced. It only took a few minutes for him to laugh and shrug her off, slinging his around hers instead to even them out. She turned and grinned at him for that.

“Street kids together, right?”

“Wouldn’t have it any other way,” Jason replied.

Steph held out a fist, leaving it hanging between them. Thinking it was a joke, he laughed and ignored it, until she persistently left it there with a pout on her lips until he, red in the cheeks, tapped his knuckles to hers, hoping no one was around to see this.

Inside, Jason felt lighter than he had in days.

Pulling her fist away, Steph bumped their shoulders together. “Boom.”

__*_ _

_Time to get the seeds into the cold ground._  
_It takes a while to grow anything,_  
_Before it's coming to the end, yeah._

__Before you put my body in the cold ground,__  
_Take some time to warm it with your hand,_  
_Before it's coming to an end, yeah._

**Author's Note:**

> I really love this song + Jay's death/resurrection. the lyrics alone . . . and well, Brand New rock. um, this is maybe a series now? comment/tell your friends?


End file.
